THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
by PutMoneyInThyPurse
Summary: It really is. I commandeered Hermione into reading it.


Author's Note: Much to my amusement, this story 'rendered' on the site with the squiggly "at" character **removed**! I've used the number 2 as a placeholder for it. See what I mean about FFN deleting email addresses?

* * *

"Honestly," Hermione huffed. "Don't these fanfiction writers have anything better to do than waste our time?"

"Now calm down a minute, Hermione…" Ron started.

"No, really! It's ridiculous!"

"Yeah!" Harry snapped, lowering the sheet of parchment in his hand with a look of disgust on his face. "Oh, don't mind me, I've only got to kill Voldemort, save the world, it's _quite_ all right, no trouble at _all_, go right ahead and make me indulge all your silly whims…"

"What do they want you to do this time?" Ginny asked sympathetically, cutting Harry off with an ease born of long practice. "Get pregnant? Snog Harry?"

"No, they…"

"I hope they don't want ME to get pregnant!" Ron burst out in horror.

"What are YOU complaining about?" whined Harry. "I'm the one who usually has Snape's babies!"

Ginny made a gagging noise, then perked up. "Oh, well that's all right then, if you can have babies I don't need to spoil my figure…"

"QUIET!" bellowed Hermione, and they all fell silent. "She wants me to make a… a _public service announcement_ for some website called Fan Fiction dot Net."

Ron buried his face in his hands.

"Well, you'd best get it over with, hadn't you?" said Ginny sensibly.

"All right, here goes." Hermione took a sheet of print out of her bag and began to read. "Dear Fanfiction . Net Users, Please note that when you write out your email, website or AOL address…"

"What's AOL? Academy of Ordinary… um, Levels?" Ron hazarded a guess.

"No, it's America Online."

"Like tightrope walking? Some kind of club?" Ginny said brightly.

"No," sighed Harry, "it's an Internet thing."

"Oh." Ron and Ginny buried their faces in their hands. The two youngest Weasleys had recently been enlightened about the Internet in a rather scarring incident involving an NC-17 story that starred Ron, Hermione, Snape, Malfoy and the Giant Squid, and involved copious amounts of orange peel and whipped cream.

"Could you please let me finish?" said Hermione in a long-suffering tone of voice. "Dear Fanfiction . Net Users, Please note that when you write out your email, website or AOL address, if you write it out in the normal manner, that is to say as you would in an email or URL field…"

"The Earl of what?"

"Ron!" Hermione rolled her eyes. "It stands for Uniform Resource Locator."

"I didn't know that!" said Harry, sounding impressed.

"Is that different from Madam Malkin's?" Ginny had the air of one trying to understand.

"_I'll-explain-later_," said Hermione with the air of someone whose last nerve is wearing thin.

"Yeah," said Ron, "keep your shirt on." He eyed Hermione's chest speculatively. "Then again…"

Hermione turned pink, cleared her throat and went on hurriedly. "Please note that when you write out your email, website or AOL address, if you write it out in the normal manner, that is to say as you would in an email or URL field, even in a review or PM..."

"What's the Prime Minister got to do with the Netter Tin – Interim Net – um, with me banging the Giant Squid?"

"Ron, please!" Hermione snapped while Harry whispered hurriedly into his ear. "…if you write it out in the normal manner, that is to say as you would in an email or URL field, even in a review or PM, THE SITE WILL AUTOMATICALLY DELETE IT. Sorry about the shouting," she apologized, "but it was written out in capital letters. Anyway. "Thus, your recipient will get a PM saying "Oh, I'd love to get the address to your Yahoo! Group." She glared at Ron. "Don't say a word. Where was I? Oh. "Thus, your recipient will get a PM saying "Oh, I'd love to get the address to your Yahoo! Group. Please email it to me at ."

"At what?" asked Harry.

"Well, that's the point!" said Hermione.

"The point of what?"

"Of the public service announcement!"

"You've lost me."

"And us!" chorused Ron and Ginny.

"If you'd just shut up and listen," seethed Hermione, "you'd understand that that's all the recipient will get. If you write out your email or Web address the regular way, the recipient will never get it, because the site automatically deletes it. They just get a blank space where the email or the URL was supposed to be."

Harry looked enlightened. "Oh, I see!" His face grew slightly put-upon again. "Not that it helps me fight Voldemort, mind you, but…"

"Harry, that's brilliant!" said Hermione. "We could send him a virus by e-mail!"

"Nah, he probably uses anti-virus software… What am I saying!" Harry caught himself. "Hermione, Voldemort doesn't HAVE a computer!"

"Well, he should." She clapped her hand over her mouth, shocked. "I think I've met one exchange student from America too many."

"OI!" Ron and Ginny yelled. "Can we get back to the announcement thingy, please?"

"Oh. Right." Hermione cleared her throat.

"Dear Fanfiction . Net Users,

Please note that when you write out your email, website or AOL address, if you write it out in the normal manner, that is to say as you would in an email or URL field, even in a review or PM, THE SITE WILL AUTOMATICALLY DELETE IT. Thus, your recipient will get a PM saying "Oh, I'd love to get the address to your Yahoo! Group. Please email it to me at ." Your address will never reach the sender. To avoid this problem, we recommend the following strategies. 1) Adding a space between parts of the address, e.g. "hermionegranger 2 gmail . com." -_No_, Ron, adding a space into the address does _not_ mean you have to move the house sideways, get him out of here before I lose my patience.- 2) Writing out the character 2 as the word "at", and the fullstop, or period -and what are you giggling about, Ginny, that's what they call it in America- as a word "dot" . Here is an example: hermionegranger at gmail dot com. For websites, you can add spaces and write the "dot" out as a word, as follows: 3) www dot hermionegranger dot com, or merely add spaces: 4) www . hermionegranger . com . This will allow your address to actually reach the recipient. Thank you and good day."

**"THANK YOU, HERMIONE,"** came the Disembodied Fanfiction Authorial Voice from on high. **"NOW HERE IS YOUR NEXT ASSIGNMENT." **

The sheet of paper in her hands disappeared, to be replaced with a sheaf of single-spaced print, entitled "Gay Sex, Incest and Lesbian Love: How Four Teens _Really_ Defeated Voldemort."

"What's in it, Hermione?"

She passed a hand over her eyes. "Sorry," she said. "You're really, really, _really_ not going to like this…"


End file.
